Blog: Capturing My Attention

That screaming kid you saw at the supermarket last week, demanding to take home every thing in sight? That kid was in my head this morning when I went online to order some jewelry design supplies. I've recently sold a lot of earrings (earrings you don't know anything about, 'cause I haven't taken the time to photograph them, much less tell you about how I stole then slightly altered the design from a popular fashion catalog,) and need more supplies since I want to make more. Then I can sell more!

So I hop on over to the website where I buy a lot of my supplies, only to find I already have a shopping cart filled with Over Sixty Items. Already. Now how did that happen?

Makes me curious, so I click in to take a peek at the list. Hmmmm! Yea, that's some cool stuff I was, er, pre-buying. (Like window shopping online, maybe?) Well, alrighty then. I'll keep 'em for now and see what happens when I finish adding More Stuff I Absolutely Have To Have Right This Very Minute...At Least As Soon As Fed Ex Can Get It Here.

But they have a sale advertised on their home page, so I was waylaid by the promise of More Things I Cannot Live Without. And really, it's good to buy a lot of things at one time because even if the local suppliers are having sales, they rarely hit discounts as low as I can reach if I buy four trillion sterling silver head pins at a single time. Or a rough equivalent.

After clicking through the 21 pages of items on sale - each of which are really and truly quite remarkable deals, I find I still need to order a couple of rolls of sterling silver wire (hm - this is where I'd link to the story of the fiasco from the day before Thanksgiving, if I'd told you about it, which I didn't, when I drove down to one of the local nifty You'd Miss It If You Didn't Know It Was Here, Even If The Structure Weren't Painted Purple With A Bold Mural Across The Side shops where you can buy all manner of sterling silver wire in all manner of gauges. Except, of course, for the gauge I needed on that specific day. It was not lost on me, by the way, that the sign that reads "Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part," hanging in their Mostly Employees Only Unless You're Cute, Then They Might Invite You Back There While They Cut Your Wire, back room, was facing the doorway where customers could clearly see it. I love shopping at this eclectic little place.

Point taken. I had absolutely failed to plan. But since they didn't have what I needed, I bought something else, which is always a bad idea because even thought you THINK you're going to try out something new and discover a way cool new design, mostly what you end up with is more supplies that were not what you wanted in the first place, and now you have to make room for more stuff...you don't need.

But not today. Today I decided to order 25 yards of both gauges and hardnesses of the wire I've recently run out of. This would be the opposite of "failure to plan," right?

So I pored through that sales area of the online catalog, clicking willy-nilly on Items That Sure Would Be Cool To Have, next time I sit down to design, oh, maybe 73 necklaces at a single time. Because you know what? Even if I don't budget for it now, but I also don't order it? I'm still gonna' need it. And when I find I simply must have it this very day because THIS is the design I want to make, never mind the 834 other options I could choose, you know I'm going to drive right over to this or that store and pick it up the day I want it, which means I won't get it on sale or at wholesale prices, either, and in the end, I'd pay twice as much.

So all told? I ordered $199.43 worth of jewelry design supplies (including my friend's 4 items, that is,) and that was after I deleted about 20 things I can probably live without.

But guess what? I saved At Least $149!!!

Now I need to factor some nice long design days into my upcoming schedule. 'Cause even when you're your own boss of at least part of your life's activities? You still gotta' justify that kind of expense...

I'll be sure to let you know when all those new designs are ready for your perusal!